Hexoshi is a new libre game I'm working on which (as you might be able to tell from the screenshot and video) is largely inspired by the Metroid series. My goal is for this to be the greatest libre free-roaming game to date and I also seek to surpass the games that inspire it.

* New abilities for the player character, Anneroy, which will be obtained by collecting special artifacts. The new abilities planned for Milestone 1 are an ability to transform into a little ball, allowing access to short passages; an ability to wall-jump, allowing access to otherwise out-of-reach ledges; and a spike weapon for the ball form to destroy special blocks and kill nearby enemies.* Graphics that are currently missing, in particular death and teleport animations for Anneroy and a proper background.* Completing the first major area of the game, composed of approximately 30-40 individual rooms.* New enemies, which will be used in the first major area of the game.* Deciding Anneroy's full name, the name of the planet, and the name of the first area.

Julius {l Wrote}:Any specific reason why you prefer Savannah over gitlab? To me the latter seems like a good place to host FOSS projects no?

GitLab is good, but as far as I can tell it doesn't have arbitrary file hosting, and I don't like that its Web interfaces require JavaScript (I object to even libre JavaScript requirements on Web pages). Also, I like being a part of the "nongnu.org" domain name.

Looking good, best of luck to the project! I hope it's not too ambitious, as it seems like the largest project you've made by far.

onpon4 {l Wrote}:* Completing the first major area of the game, composed of approximately 30-40 individual rooms.

There's no reason why you should make levels in the same order that they are played; in fact many designers like Miyamoto or Romero suggest making your first level last. Some level in the middle of the game would be a good place to start imho.

Good luck with CrowdSupply. I nearly donated! Thinking about it. (For financial reasons I have never been able to commit to any crowd funding effort in the past, but now I have a bit of expendable capital I'm really hesistant when it comes to spending it.)

This campaign is now over a third of the way funded, which is great! Let’s keep it going!

In other news, it was brought to my attention today that the instructions on the Hexoshi Download page didn’t work. This was because Hexoshi needed a more recent version of xsge_physics which I had failed to release, and has been corrected. If you had installed a previous, insufficient version of xsge_physics, you can upgrade with “python -m pip install –upgrade xsge_physics”. This will enable Hexoshi to run correctly.

Yesterday, while I was at work, funding for this campaign passed the 50% mark! Of course, this is magnificent; in just one out of about four weeks, we are halfway through our target. If we keep this up, we might be able to fund both Milestone 1 and Milestone 2 at the same time!

Of course, it’s not over yet. Don’t forget to spread the word! Every post on blogs and social media helps.

Another great thing that has happened is translations; people have stepped forward and translated Hexoshi to Spanish and Portuguese. You can see these translations now by running the “build.py” script in “data/locale”, then running Hexoshi with the “-l es” or “-l pt” command-line option (or just having your system language set to one of these).

uh, was there someone who took the $500 one, or how did it jump so suddenly?

Edit: Congrats on reaching that milestone of course!

Edit2: hmm no... lots of $5 supports. Strange result, normally people go for the perks and donate more than the minimum. For course here they don't have to reach a certain level to get a digital copy later on... hmm. I suspect a lot of people who are not really into gaming (on that crowdsupply website that's likely) thought it is never the less worth putting $5 into as a donation.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete” - Buckminster Fuller

Only a day after this campaign reached 50% of its goal, our entire goal has now been reached! It was quite a surprise yesterday when, while on a break during a busy day at work, I noticed that someone had contributed roughly $500 since I had last checked it. But I was even more surprised when I got home: while I cannot identify for sure who it was, I can tell based on the list of backers that this was one person, and not only did this person donate $500, they donated $500 in $5 pledges, meaning they asked for nothing in return! That is incredibly generous and whoever it is, I can’t possibly thank you enough.

This of course means we now know for sure that Milestone 1 will move forward, but remember: extra funds can be put toward the goals of Milestone 2, and maybe even Milestone 3. So let’s keep pushing!

Looks promising.Feels a tiny too much like a clone in my opinion (only based on the video).So it would be good if you go for some original gameplay features at some point.(You can look at axiom verge which is a good example of how to take inspiration from metroid without making a clone)

I was able to test the game (the readme needs to be updated, I had to install sge, xsge, tmx and pathlib dependencies which are not listed).It’s quite promising.Horizontal speed feels a bit low but I guess later on the game we’ll be able to run somehow. It makes simple platform jump sometimes challenging though.It’s also a bit slow when changing direction which get annoying quickly.

I’m not used to the aiming system, I guess it’s the one from metroid which I almost never played. I hope with gamepad we can just use the diagonals to aim in diagonal, seems simpler ^^.When killing an ennemy, it look weird because the bullet explodes against it like it would against a wall, and the enemy just disappear. But that may be part of the graphics you will pay with the crowd funding, I did not check.

I guess I finished the game in its actual state, there is one path I can’t go because I’m too tall (so I guess I need to wait for morphball implementation), and one leading up which needs walljump implementation I suppose. And the strong door which I guess needs a stronger weapon but I did not find any.

I think it would help you get less «clone» remarks if you change the look of the character a bit to avoid it having the exact same helmet as Samus.

I was able to test the game (the readme needs to be updated, I had to install sge, xsge, tmx and pathlib dependencies which are not listed).

They're not listed because actual releases will bundle these dependencies in.

I’m not used to the aiming system, I guess it’s the one from metroid which I almost never played.

It supports two aiming systems: one is a slight variation on the Metroid Fusion aiming system, and one is the Super Metroid aiming system. The one caveat is that up and down always aim straight up and down unless you hold the diagonal aim button, rather than implicitly aiming diagonally when you run (so that you can shoot straight up while moving).

I hope with gamepad we can just use the diagonals to aim in diagonal, seems simpler ^^.

Yes, you can.

When killing an ennemy, it look weird because the bullet explodes against it like it would against a wall, and the enemy just disappear. But that may be part of the graphics you will pay with the crowd funding, I did not check.

I haven't entirely decided what visual effect I will use for enemy deaths, but I'm thinking of just making the smaller enemies ghost out. Another possibility is to have a small "explosion" animation. This is not part of the Milestone 1 goals, the reason being that it's one of the lower priorities and I haven't settled on the answer yet. I'll probably do it at the same time, though.

there is one path I can’t go because I’m too tall (so I guess I need to wait for morphball implementation), and one leading up which needs walljump implementation I suppose.

Correct on both counts.

And the strong door which I guess needs a stronger weapon but I did not find any.

Those are actually just placeholders for doors to rooms that don't exist yet.

I think it would help you get less «clone» remarks if you change the look of the character a bit to avoid it having the exact same helmet as Samus.

I would also get less "clone" remarks if I turned Anneroy into a giant squid, but that doesn't mean I should do that.

There are three reasons I don't want to change Anneroy's design:

1. The sprites are already made. Changing them now would incur more cost.2. It's a space helmet. Of course it's going to look similar to Samus's space helmet. This is unavoidable.3. Even if the appearance of the character is entirely different from Samus, that won't stop people from calling Hexoshi a Metroid "clone". The main basis for this claim isn't the character's appearance, it's the style of gameplay.

onpon4 {l Wrote}:They're not listed because actual releases will bundle these dependencies in.

For people cloning the git repo to try the game out it would be good to have instructions somewhere.

It supports two aiming systems: one is a slight variation on the Metroid Fusion aiming system, and one is the Super Metroid aiming system. The one caveat is that up and down always aim straight up and down unless you hold the diagonal aim button, rather than implicitly aiming diagonally when you run (so that you can shoot straight up while moving).

I hadn’t thought about that, good point. In the actual state of the game, shooting diagonaly is way more effective against the bats so that’s what I was trying to do most of the time.The fact that down shoot down is a bit weird at first too. I’m used to games where you can only shoot down if in the air, and on the ground down allows you to crouch to shoot low. Like metal slug.

I haven't entirely decided what visual effect I will use for enemy deaths, but I'm thinking of just making the smaller enemies ghost out. Another possibility is to have a small "explosion" animation. This is not part of the Milestone 1 goals, the reason being that it's one of the lower priorities and I haven't settled on the answer yet. I'll probably do it at the same time, though.

It’s not that big of a deal, it’s just something which bugged me when seeing it. Maybe just the same effect than now but where the enemy was instead of next to it would be enough for it to feel ok.

I would also get less "clone" remarks if I turned Anneroy into a giant squid, but that doesn't mean I should do that.

That would be pretty cool though :-)

There are three reasons I don't want to change Anneroy's design:

1. The sprites are already made. Changing them now would incur more cost.

True, but it will be event more expensive if you decide to change it later, it’s easier to change this before there are too much sprites done.

2. It's a space helmet. Of course it's going to look similar to Samus's space helmet. This is unavoidable.3. Even if the appearance of the character is entirely different from Samus, that won't stop people from calling Hexoshi a Metroid "clone". The main basis for this claim isn't the character's appearance, it's the style of gameplay.

Hum maybe, but it would help the game if when looking at a screenshot I was able to say «Oh, that’s hexoshi». This is not the case right now, first thing that comes to mind is «that’s a metroid» and maybe «it looks like the libre one I can’t remember the name of» :-PUsing Metroid gameplay and using Metroid aspect are two different things.